Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once? If not, it’s an independent 2022 film by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, AKA the Daniels. It was distributed by A24, a TV & film company that is known for shunning the styles of major studios. It starts Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, and Tallie Medel.
The movie itself is hard to categorize, as it has moments of surreal comedy, martial arts fighting, existential drama, science fiction, fantasy, and more. It is an endlessly complex film, and it has a lot to say about the meaning of life – specifically, that there really isn’t one, but we can do something about that. Oh, and you cannot read this post without getting some spoilers, in case you still haven’t seen this masterpiece.
First, the basic plot. We begin with the first act, titled Everything. Evelyn Quan Wong is a tired, middle-aged Chinese immigrant who, alongside her endlessly cheerful husband, Waymond, runs a laundromat in Southern California. She and Waymond fell in love in China, then moved to the United States, years ago. Her judgmental, aging father, Gong Gong, is visiting from China for her Chinese New Year party. Evelyn is struggling to accept her lesbian daughter, Joy, who is battling depression and dating a non-Chinese girl named Becky.
Evelyn is being audited by the IRS. She and Waymond go to the IRS building; in the elevator, Waymond’s body is taken over by someone calling himself “Alpha Waymond” – a Waymond from another timeline in the multiverse. At it turns out, every life choice creates a new alternative universe. In the timeline Alpha Waymond is from, which he calls the “Alphaverse”, the now-deceased Alpha-Evelyn developed “verse-jumping” technology. With this tech, if one performs an action that is statistically unlikely, one can access the skills, memories, and even bodies of their own alternate versions .
According to Alpha Waymond, the entire multiverse is threatened by Jobu Tupaki, the Alpha version of Evelyn’s daughter, Joy. Alpha-Evelyn forced her to use this verse-jumping technology beyond what she can handle. This completely broke her and ever since, she has experienced all realities at once. Now, Jobu Tupaki – whose name Evelyn assumes Alpha Waymond made up – has created the “Everything Bagel”. She literally put everything on the bagel – “hopes and dreams…old report cards…every breed of dog, every last personal ad on Craigslist, sesame, poppy seed, salt”. This created a singularity in the shape of a bagel that could destroy the multiverse.
As we learn through some truly ridiculous hijinks in multiple dimensions, this bagel is not a weapon. Jobu Tupaki herself explains the bagel to Evelyn, then shows it to her. Jobu made it, she says, to see if she could truly, really die – in all universes. Jobu is seeking out this particular Evelyn because she thinks that only this Evelyn is nihilistic like her – sees the pointlessness of it all like her. She even invites Evelyn to die with her. Evelyn, her mind fractured by this point, is persuaded by the bagel, and hurts those around her in an apathetic and nihilistic way.
But then, something changes. It’s Waymond’s voice. Asking, begging her to be kind.
During her multiversal hijinks, Evelyn met a version of Waymond who never left China with her, and became a movie star in Hong Kong – just like she did. They meet in an alleyway after an elegant gala, and discuss what could’ve happened if they had stayed together when they were younger. She tells him it would’ve been miserable – nothing but laundry and taxes. This version of Waymond walks away saying, “In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”
It’s that kind of kindness Waymond is talking about. He knows people are “scared and confused”. He knows the world is a cruel, meaningless place. He is perfectly aware of why Evelyn and Joy are nihilistic. In two simultaneous monologues that take place in different dimensions, he asks people to be kind and explains what that means. He asks that they fight the uncaring, dystopian, soul-crushing nature of the world around them using genuine, real kindness – especially when they are confused.
The conclusion of the movie sees Evelyn “learn to fight like” Waymond – using her multiversal powers to help people. By seeing into the lives of the movie’s antagonistic soldiers and solving problems they have, she does not defeat them, but removes their desire to fight by making them content or providing them with pleasure. She gets the foot soldiers of the forces of evil to stop fighting. In her home universe, she works to mend brittle or breaking relationships. Then, Jobu Tupaki enters the bagel in one universe, while Joy pleads with her mom to let her go in the home universe. With the help of others, Evelyn saves Jobu Tupaki from the bagel, and Evelyn tells Joy that, even though she could be anywhere else in this senseless, absurd world, she will always want to be with her. Finally, in the third act, titled All at Once, things have been reconciled. Oh, and there’s hot dog fingers.
Okay, that was a lot. This movie is a lot. Let’s analyze the film’s commentary on existence and kindness, then we’ll be done.
I would argue the two central ideas in the film are parent-child relationships and the meaningless nature of our world. I’ll focus on the latter. EEAAO explicitly states that our lives and the world we live in are devoid of meaning – it does not deny that we live in an uncaring, pointless universe. The film is absurdist, supporting the “belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe”. But it doesn’t simply stop there; that would be a very bleak film.
No, EEAAO goes on to suggest a way to offer relief from this nihilistic nature. It isn’t easy, but EEAAO tells us we must practice kindness. “Kindness”, as the film – or more accurately, Waymond – defines it, is not to be taken lightly. It is not a weak, feeble, thing. It does not mean being fake nice, or ignoring the bad things going on. To Waymond, kindness is how one can combat the absurd nature of the world. Kindness means going out of one’s way to shelter others; it means helping other people solve problems; it means understanding why people turn against each other, and working hard to help undo the causes of their strife. To Waymond, kindness means an enduring, unbreakable hope. And the film asks us to have and share that hope.
- References:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7YnbGszcb8
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CfYdpwlo54
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBKg4_xVgp4
- https://gamerant.com/empathy-biggest-new-movie-superpower/
- https://www.vulture.com/2022/04/everything-everywhere-all-at-onces-influences-explained.html
- https://mashable.com/article/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-meaning
- https://mudron.bigcartel.com/product/eeaao-evelyn-w-circles
Myths & Mischief 
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